VW cheated on its tests about how much of various kinds of pollutants its engines emitted at various levels of speed. These phony test results were meant to show that VW in fact had much more economical diesel cars, with less pollution, than it did.

Why doesn’t VW just write a check to VW buyers who might have been misled for the extra cost of the gasoline and let it go at that? That would not provide the fodder for trial lawyers, editorialists, bureaucrats, and politicians, writes Ben Stein in The American Spectator.

Ben Stein is a writer, actor, and lawyer, who served as a speechwriter in the Nixon administration as the Watergate scandal unfolded. He began his unlikely road to stardom when director John Hughes cast him as the numbingly dull economics teacher in the urban comedy, "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Read more reports from Ben Stein — Click Here Now.